Bottom of the 33rd by Dan Barry

“Bottom of the 33rd is chaw-chewing, sunflower-spitting, pine tar proof that too much baseball is never enough.” —Jane Leavy, author of The Last Boy and Sandy Koufax

“What a book—an exquisite exercise in story-telling, democracy and myth-making.” —Colum McCann, winner of the National Book Award for Let The Great World Spin

From Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Dan Barry comes the beautifully recounted story of the longest game in baseball history—a tale celebrating not only the robust intensity of baseball, but the aspirational ideal epitomized by the hard-fighting players of the minor leagues. In the tradition of Moneyball, The Last Hero, and Wicked Good Year, Barry’s Bottom of the 33rd is a reaffirming story of the American Dream finding its greatest expression in timeless contests of the Great American Pastime.

Dan Barry is a national columnist for the New York Times. He has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and in 1994 was part of an investigative team for the Providence Journal that won the prize for a series on Rhode Island's justice system. He is the author of a memoir, Pull Me Up, and City Lights, a collection of his New York Times columns. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Maplewood, New Jersey.

Unrated Critic Reviews for Bottom of the 33rd

Kirkus Reviews

Wittily and gracefully, Barry works out his Easter themes of hope and redemption, providing, of course, an account of the game, but most memorably capturing the atmosphere of the city and the stories of the people who shared this weird moment in baseball’s long history: the players, two headed fo...

The New York Times

The exquisitely named Rochester right fielder, Drungo Hazewood, will exit baseball bitterly, drive a truck and think about “the best time of his life: the days he spent playing baseball on nights like this, as cold as it is, with got-your-back teammates close by, and the Baltimore organization in...

The New York Times

(They played the decisive 33rd inning two months later.)
The improbable web of coincidences that made this event possible — most amazingly, the 1981 International League manual inexplicably lacked every other edition’s 12:50 a.m. curfew — becomes credible once you have witnessed the scop...

Los Angeles Times

Eight hours later, on Easter morning, some common sense prevailed and the game — tied, 2-2 — was suspended on the urging of the league's president, who finally weighed in at 4 a.m. The game was completed two months later, drawing a far larger crowd as well as national media attention as the major...

Seattle PI

A columnist for the New York Times, and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, Barry's repertoire in Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball's Longest Game " title="Link to Amazon's book page" target="_blank">Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball's Longest Game, expands to Amer...